The alley behind the apartment building was known as a place the girls who hung out on the street at the end of the alley took their johns. Every so often, our guys would drive a patrol car down that alley just to keep the girls on their toes. They'd only caught one there in two years, and that was only because the john had the girl laid back on the hood of his little sports car at the time. He couldn't get his dick out of her and his pants up before the uniforms got close enough to see what was going on and flipped on the lights on the patrol car.
That morning about six in the alley, they found something they didn't expect. It was another guy, and he was naked, but there was no girl and it didn't look like the guy had been having a very good time.
I pulled my unmarked sedan up beside the coroner's van about seven thirty. It's funny how sometimes you remember things from the past when you can't remember what you did yesterday. It's age catching up with me, I guess. Anyway, as soon as I saw the guy's face, I knew who he was.
His name was Alfred William Justice, and I'd arrested him eleven years before. I remembered him because of how smart he played the traffic stop and because of how stupid he really was.
I was still wearing a uniform then, and Alfred had made the mistake of running a stoplight right in front of my patrol car. Alfred had done everything right that afternoon. He'd pulled over into a gas station and stopped his car, just like he was supposed to do. He sat there with his hands on the steering wheel and didn't move until I asked him to roll down his window.
He did that and then put his hands back on the wheel. I'd already run his plate and came up with no wants or warrants, and no prior convictions. I'd probably have let him go with just a ticket if the cloud of beer breath hadn't hit me in the face when I leaned down to ask him for license. I stood back up and asked him to get out of the car. When he did, a half full can of beer fell out of his lap and onto the pavement and I saw three empties on the floor.
I asked him to lean against his car, and when he did, I spread his legs.
"Mr. Justice, it's illegal to carry an open container of alcohol in a moving vehicle. Did you know that?
"Yeah, I know that."
"Well, that can of beer that fell out of your car and those empties tell me that's what you were doing. I'm going to arrest you for that, and maybe for DUI, but first I need to search you. You don't have anything on you that will cut or stick me, do you?"
He said he didn't and he was telling the truth. He evidently didn't think it was necessary to tell me about the little baggie with three coke rocks in it I found in his hip pocket.
I handcuffed him and walked him back to my squad car, put him in the back, and then continued my search of his vehicle. I found two more baggies, each with three rocks, wedged between the seat and backrest of the passenger seat. There was five hundred and sixty five dollars in cash in the glove box.
Alfred's lawyer negotiated a plea from a Class I felony down to Class II but Alfred still spent the next eleven years in prison. I didn't know what he got into when he got out, but it was evidently some pretty serious stuff. The only thing Alfred was getting into that night was a body bag.
I was fourteen days from retirement as a detective that night and it pissed me to get handed a case like this. If I couldn't find the perp in a couple of days, it might take months before he was behind bars. I never liked getting second hand cases, and I didn't want some first year detective to get one of mine. This one didn't look like it was going to be one of the easy ones.
The coroner was just starting to zip up the body bag when I walked up.
"Whatcha think, Walt?"
Walt finished closing the zipper, then stood up and pulled off his latex gloves.
"His name's Alfred Justice according to the license in his wallet. As for what killed him, I don't have a damned clue. The guy is dead, has been for several hours judging by his temperature. I didn't find any injuries, but it's still pretty dark back here behind this building, so it's hard to see anything. I'll have to get him on my table and pop the hood before I can tell you anything more."
Walt and two uniforms put Alfred in the coroner's SUV and Walt headed back to the morgue. The coroner's techs were still searching the area using flashlights. There wasn't much of a crime scene, but I stuck around until the techs got done. All they found in the alley besides Alfred was a gum wrapper with an address written in pencil and two condoms that had obviously been used quite a while before. I thought it was odd that Alfred's clothes weren't somewhere in that alley, but they weren't. The techs bagged everything and headed back to the lab.
It was still pretty dark in that alley because the building blocked the sunlight and there weren't any streetlights back there. There weren't any lights I could see inside the apartment building either. When I drove around the block to the front, I saw why. The sign on the entry door said "CONDEMMED BY THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT". On a paper stuck on the inside was the citation that stated the building had an infestation of roaches and rats and the plumbing system didn't work. The citation was dated two months prior, so nobody had lived there for at least that long. There wouldn't be anybody there for me to question.
On the other side of the alley was a high, chain link fenced area full of semi trailers. It was a sort of warehouse without a building. For less than a hundred a month, you could rent a trailer to store stuff. The company would pull the trailer out to your house or business and after you loaded it, they'd pull it back and park it until you wanted it again. Businesses used it to store excess inventory and equipment, and some individuals stored the extra stuff we all accumulate but can't bring ourselves to throw away or sell.
There wasn't really any type of office. There was just a small building at the gate. When I rolled up to that gate, a white-haired man looked out the window and then came out and up to the gate. He smiled.
"We're closed until nine so you'll have to come back then. I don't do anything but watch the gate. If you want to rent a trailer, you'll have to do that downtown. The number and address are on the gate."
I showed him my badge.
"I'm looking to find out if you might have seen anything happening at the back of the lot any time during the night."
"Nope, but like I said, I just watch the gate and the lot from here. I don't get paid to walk around. I'm just supposed call the cops if I see anything. Wouldn't do anymore anyway. I'm seventy-six, and I don't get paid enough to get my ass whipped."
I asked if he might have seen a car drive down the alley.
He took off his Vietnam Veteran's ball cap, scratched his head, then put the ball cap back on.
"No...no cars. There was a truck I saw when I went outside to take a leak. That was, let's see, that was right after I got here and relieved Joey, so it was probably about midnight. It was too dark to see very well, but I figured it was just a garbage truck. I see 'em once in a while dumping the dumpsters at that apartment building across the alley. Haven't seen one in months though, but I figured they just changed their route to a different time. Something happen back there?"
"No, not really. We just got a report of a guy picking up a girl on Mason and taking her back there. I'm just checking to see if that happened or not. We try to keep the girls off the street, but if we can't catch them in the act or get the guy to tell us, we can't arrest them."
He chuckled.
"Yeah, I see that sometimes. Hear 'em once in a while too. There's this one that screams, "Oh, your cocks so big" every time she takes a guy back there. I never go back to watch. I got this heart thing, and the doc says I shouldn't get too excited. That'd probably do it, seeing some guy fucking a girl."
He grinned.
"I might be seventy-six, but I ain't forgot how that feels. Wish I could feel that again at least once before I check out."
I thanked the guy and made a note to find out if any garbage trucks had been down that alley that night.
The only other information I could check out was the address I'd copied off the gum wrapper. After using the laptop in my car to find out it was the address of a corner bar down in the older part of town, I drove by the place. According to the hours posted on the door, Harry's Den didn't open until two in the afternoon, so I didn't try the door. I'd come back before the end of my shift to talk to who ever was there.
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When I got back to my desk, there was a note from Walt asking me to call him when I got back. Instead of calling, I walked down the hall to his office. Walt smiled when I knocked on the door and waved me inside. He told me to have a seat and then fished through the pile of folders on his desk.
"Ah, here it is. Jerry, your stiff must have met a martial arts expert in that alley. I couldn't see it there because of the light, but he's pretty blue like he'd stopped breathing for some reason. The X-rays show he suffered a crushed larynx. He also has a bruise on his solar plexus like somebody jabbed him there. If it was hard enough, it would have caused his diaphragm to spasm and made it difficult to breath for a couple of minutes.
